Retail software distributed on a computer-readable medium such as a CD-ROM often becomes outdated soon after release. For example, software patches and additional drivers may be available after the software has been released for distribution. When a user installs the software, the CD-ROM with the retail software does not contain the most up to date information.
Some prior art systems provide for the updating of the software after the software is installed. For example, the Windows Update service from Microsoft Corporation allows installed software to receive certain updates from a remote server. Tax preparation software is another example of software that may be updated after the software has been installed by receiving updated tax forms from a remote server. However, the software updates may contain critical fixes necessary for stable installation or operation of the software. In addition, the updates necessary for software installed on a particular destination machine may differ based on the particular destination machine.
For these reasons, a system for dynamically updating software prior to installation and specific to the destination machine is desired to address one or more of these and other disadvantages.